Author: Brian

Tracy’s not at work today, but she just chimed in with a text message about non-cooperative penguins.

Silly penguins.

I so want to post about the snakes in my house and how I’m freaked out by them but slowly getting used to them and how it’s Smacky’s job to kill them and he’s not doing a very good job.

This may be that post.

The nice white-haired lady, a fellow customer at my favorite coffee shop just 10 minutes ago, laughed and laughed when I advanced the notion that perhaps the corporate world would be a little more up-front about the cut-throat and anti-employee decisions they made.

I thought I was being properly cynical.

She thought I was being hopelessly naive.

I smiled and sipped my coffee, while waiting for my bus.

ATM located on front of building.

On the south west corner of the intersection of SE Bybee and Milwaukie Ave., there’s a bank. The building occupies about a quarter of the lot; the rest is parking, mostly. There are entrances on three of the buildings sides – the east, north and west sides. The drive-through is on the south side of the building. The ATM shares the east wall of the building with one of the entrances.

I walked past and spotted the sign, and, because I’m an over-thinker, I immediately wondered what the sign author meant by “front”. The sign was in a door that led into the interior of the building. Why wasn’t that door the “front”? Was it because it was above the main floor, so that once inside that door, you had to walk down a stairway to reach the main lobby?

The doors on the north side of the bank shared that wall with lots of glass, windows from about knee-high up to the ceiling. Why wasn’t that the “front”? It looked like a “front” – it fronted onto the sidewalk. The teller’s booths, inside, faced that way. Seemed like it could be a “front”.

The door on the east side, next to the ATMs, and apparently labeled the “front” of the building by the sign’s author, led to a short hallway, and then to another door into the main lobby. I suppose it could be considered the “front” by virtue of it having a vestibule before the main bank floor.

Still seemed a bit of an arbitrary label to me, though.

TRIVIA:

“A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories” is the first line of what novel?

I stared at the words chalked onto the board next to the cash register in my favorite coffee shop. J was filling my mug with Brazilian Top Sky roast, her back to me.

The words were familiar. I’d read that book. My first impression, floating up through the layers of my consciousness, faded into view: “Nineteen Eighty-Four” by George Orwell. Was that it? I thought.

“Grey” seemed familiar. Nothing like a dystopian work to make a virtue of colorlessness. So did the mention of the building only being thirty-four stories high. In many cities that’s a smallish skyscraper. That mention made the novel in question almost certainly a work of science-fiction.

But the folks here try to be tricky. On the Fourth of March they had a question whose answer was “March forth!” (the question was “What’s the only day of the year that’s also a command?”) They’d asked for Paul McCartney’s middle name (which is Paul). Tricky folks, these. Almost never did they go for the obvious answer.

Was there anything in the news lately that would make “Nineteen Eighty-Four” topical? Besides the Bush Administration, of course, imprisoning people without a trial or due process or recourse to even legal representation; invading a country that posed no threat to us; allowing polluters more latitude under legislation called “Clear Skies Act”.

As J. turned to give me my mug, I furrowed my brow, pointed at the sign, and said, “Nineteen Eighty-Four? Is that it?”

She leaned to the side so she could read the answer, stuck on a Post-It note to the cash register. “Nope!” She waited for me to keep guessing.

…

Nothing came to mind. I gave up. “I give up.”

“You give up?” she confirmed.

I nodded. I was smiling in my defeat. “What is it?”

She read the Post-It note again to make sure. “Brave New World.”

“Argh!” I mock-growled. “I was so close!”

J. nodded and handed me my coffee. “You were!”

Presented for your amusement (and potential death-defying): a list of 60 things worth shortening your life for.

I’ve done a few of these… Looks like I’ve got some work to do.

Feel free to incriminate yourself in the comments.

Me? I’m a bit too self-preservation-y to do that.

A lady in nearby Milwaukie, OR fell for a scam involving a cashier’s check for $2950. Scammers sent her a check, asked her to wire that amount back to them as some sort of security, and they would send her $50,000.00 in return as a prize.

I want one of those – what’s to stop me from just cashing the check and finding some reason the wire back won’t work? What are they going to do – sue me because I didn’t play along with their con-game?

I guess they could come beat it out of me. But beyond that… what?

One of the best things about blogs, at least for me, is that I can get new material from writers I like, and much more often (daily or even more often) than waiting for a new book by them (every few years). And almost all of my favorite authors blog. I’m not sure that should surprise anyone – writers write, and blogging is writing, and since most writers write because they want readers to read their writings, it’s a marriage made in some heavenly (though material and scientific) place.

And so today I read Neil Gaiman (though he calls it a “Journal” and not a “blog”). Fans of his have noticed that he writes his first draft out longhand, in some beautiful Italian leather-bound book, and to the fans’ surprise, Mr. Gaiman has not made any edits to his copy – no cross-outs, no line-outs, no scribbles in the margins. They write to him, and he replies:

If I’m writing fiction by hand I’ll put a loose line through something that I’m definitely not going to use (but I’d never pull it out, and I’d normally want it to be readable in case I change my mind, or in case there’s something there I can use). But for me the important thing is that it’s pure first draft, straight out of the head and onto the page, sort of like this blog. The important thing is moving forward, for me: editing, fixing, tidying, leaving stuff out, that’s all for when I put it onto the computer, that’s all for the second draft.

This is very good advice, and not just for writers. Just do it, just start; take that first step; start now. Begin and see what happens. Say “yes”, and shelve your worry and tell your negative inner voice (the voice of “Mom”, saying “No”) to pipe down.

There are no mistakes, in a first draft. There’s pure thought becoming pure action. Save everything. Judge nothing. Later, when the thought has run its course, you can go back and collect the things you like and set aside the things you don’t (but you may still want those things for different projects, and even if you don’t, they still stand as examples of what you tried).

For instance, I’ve had an idea of collecting and posting links to my favorite authors’ blogs, and calling out the ones who don’t blog (Tim Powers, you rascal; why don’t you blog?!), the ones who do, and the ones who might blog a bit too much (Bruce Sterling, I’m lookin’ at you – You write so much, that it’s theoretically possible to keep up with everything you write, but there are practical limits to how much one fan can do).

But that post idea became this actual post, and on the whole, I’d rather post actual posts, rather than think about potential posts – and I hope that anyone reading this feels the same!

I just broke a lamp.

Well… I knocked it off the stand by the door with my messenger bag, grabbed Smacky and tossed him in the bathroom before he could sniff around the broken glass, got a plastic bag to put all the larger pieces of glass in, put that in the trash, hauled the vacuum cleaner out of the closet, plugged it in, vacuumed, surveyed the area with a flashlight to make sure I got all the glass, put the vacuum cleaner away, put the remains of the lamp in the garbage, and let Smacky out of the bathroom.

Does that count as “just” breaking a lamp?

I’ve seen it a bajillion times, said it a bajillion-quadrillion times, and made use of it eleventy-bajillion times.

But until now, this very moment, I have not paid much attention to the OK button:

It’s universal, ubiquitous, friendly, decisive, connected. It’s on your screen, it’s in your pocket. It’s everywhere. It’s you and the machine having a casual conversation. “How’s this?” “OK!” We probably say OK dozens of times each day without realizing it. It’s a word that requires two people, the speaker and the listener. OK is connection.

All interaction with technology is a conversation. You ask a device to do something. It responds with a question or some choices. In most situations, your simplest response is to simply say OK. The OK button is the handshake. You and the device have worked together to a mutual agreement. “Do you want to save this phone number?” OK. “Do you want to print your document two-sided?” OK.

It’s the one button that requires nearly no translation. Luckily, it’s also one of the most compact words available. OK. Two letters that will fit on any button. OK is not just a word anymore. It’s an icon. A wordicon.